Overview of Automatic Storage Management (ASM)

Automatic Storage Management (ASM) is an option and a new feature of Oracle 10g and onwards that simplifies the storage management for all Oracle database file types. It renders the capabilities of a volume manager and filesystem together into the Oracle database kernel. Although, it inherits the Stripe And Mirror Everything (SAME) functionality, it strips the data (extents) evenly across the ASM disks of a disk group by default and provides the mirroring functionality as an option. The management and administration of ASM is made easy through a well-known set of SQL statements, such as, CREATE, ALTER, DROP, and through GUI tools.

While the ASM was initially intended for managing and maintaining only the Oracle database files and other related files, its functionality has been significantly improved in 11g R1 and R2 versions to manage all types of data. The following are some of the key features and benefits of ASM:

• It simplifies the storage...